Three new flashes

So I got trigger-happy. I ended up bidding and winning three eBay items this past week. I won a Nikon SB-25, a Metz 32 MZ-3, and a Canon Speedlight 199A, all of these for $110 USD + tax. In addition to my SB-800 I will have four flash guns in total! Ok, that is a little too much, but I guess this will give me more freedom to play with lights now, although I have only three remote flash RF triggers. I knew I should have bought four triggers! I wonder if I could set my SB-800 as a IR slave to my new D7000 that will arrive in a couple of weeks and then use the remote RF triggers for the other three.

You may wonder why I am buying all these equipments all of a sudden. Well, I am building a mobile home studio. I still need some umbrellas, stands, a light meter, and a back drop. More money to spend. Hey, the xmas season!

... In fact, I'm still bidding on eBay for a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens. :)

Wireless flash trigger, part II

I received the package in the post yesterday morning. It might have arrived the day before actually. In any case, I had a chance to unpack and test it out last night.

My first impression after seeing the transmitter and receivers was, el cheapo, price-wise and construction-wise. They were all plasticky and cheap to the look and feel. Everything is plastic. The base of the receivers is all plastic and feels flimsy. I wonder if I should place a $500 speedlight on it. Well, I guess it would not break that easily and the speedlight is not all that heavy. Nevertheless, it does not give much comfort knowing how flimsy it is.

The receivers require two AAA batteries to operate. Rechargeable batteries work well. I used to have many rechargeable AAA batteries. Now, I don't know where they all went. The transmitter came with a battery. I have not opened the transmitter yet to see the battery but I bet it will be fun trying to find one.

Does it work? Oh yeah, just set the flash guns on manual mode and you are all set to go. There are no TTLs of any kind, just pure manual. The receivers have just one middle contact. It's either fire or not. Really, you should have a hand-held light meter to figure out all the flash output strengths. I wonder if I'd be better off getting a fluorescent light that stays on all the time so you could meter the light with the camera.

Wireless flash trigger

So, along with a brand new Nikon D7000 that I just placed an order for a couple of days ago, I have decided to delve into lighting. I have been using the SB-800 and it has been a great tool, but it was clear from last April's Henry's photo show that lighting is everything. So, I went on eBay and am bidding on a couple of older flash guns and purchased this set of wireless flash trigger units.

Sure, Nikon does have the CLS but whenever I think of IR, I think restrictions. So, I thought let's open all possibilities and go with RF instead, hence these RF trigger units.

The wireless flash trigger units are no-name but they look awfully like the Phottix brand. I expect them to arrive in a couple of days. When I get the flash guns and either soft boxes or umbrellas, it will be fun playing with light!

D300 gone

Well, after six months, I decided it was time to upgrade, again. This time, instead of keeping the camera as I did with the D80, I sold it. I need the money to upgrade. Will it be the FX D700 or the DX D7000. Either way, it will be my backup to my D80 -- when I travel it's the D80, and when I'm shooting weddings and the like, it's the new one. :)

Hilton Falls, Ontario

If you get a chance to do some hiking, pay a visit to Hilton Falls, Halton, Ontario. The fall is small but it offers natural sounds mixed with bird songs to relax to. They have a nice hiking trail and some nice spots for shooting nature.

Still looking

I woke up this morning thinking, why am I still searching for "Nikon" on various ads websites? It seems like an addiction. I would open my notebook and search looking at the ads and see what my fingers can land on. What I realized though was that, first, I really buy anything, and yet I still keep on looking for that elusive thing! That thing was, more flash guns!

I have enough lens and camera bodies to satisfy most of my hobby needs, but I also am not impressed with portrait pictures I take. Some turned out great because of accidental lighting conditions I happened to work with, but really, I typically do not have control of the lights. So, that is what it was. I was looking for a couple more speedlights and maybe a couple of remote triggers too.

Ok, I am going to finish my sandwich and go back to take a nap. If some ideas pop up, I might go out and so some shooting!

What is 5,000,000,000 ?

Flickr just announced they have reached 5,000,000,000 picture uploads yesterday. What does that mean? Nowadays, you can purchase 2TB hard disk drives for less than $200. How many of these drives would you need to store 5,000,000,000 pictures, assuming each picture is minimally about 2MB on average.

Well, I threw the numbers in the calculator, and this is what it means. You would need 10,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of storage space so you would need to buy 5000 of those 2TB drives to hold 5 billion pictures. They are probably using various storage configurations which would require more than 5000 drives but roughly speakingCool!

Airshows

Just in case someone is wondering what lens to bring to an airshow, I'd recommend you bring something like a Tokina 80-400mm lens. This is an FX lens so it's equivalent to a 120-600mm DX lens. A bigger lens would be nice but having done some shooting at the Toronto airshow this past weekend, I find the 80-400mm range to be perfect for this purpose. There was somebody there that had a prime 500mm lens but that was too restrictive I thought. Sometimes, I wanted to zoom out to 80mm and often I'd like to zoom in at 400mm. There was one moment I wished I could zoom out to 18mm but that was only one time so 80mm was fine for all intended purposes.

Here was a couple of shots from this weekend airshow:

Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6

A couple of friends went down to NYC and picked up this super-wide angle Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 for me. I think I now have the full set of ranges and types of lenses: a super-telephoto (a Tokina 80-400mm, and a Nikkor 500mm), a walk-around (Tamron 17-50mm, Nikkor 18-200mm), a portrait (Nikkor 50mm), a macro (Nikkor 105mm), and a super-wide (Sigma 10-20mm). Now, I need more time to get out there and shoot cool stuff!

Macro with a Nikkor 105mm AF-D

I decided to bite the bullet and invested in a second hand Nikkor 105mm AF-D lens -- not the VR version. I shot some tests and it looks much more promising than my 50mm + extension tube system. What I was looking were the following:

• Depth of field: the 50mm system gave me only about 2mm to work with. There was no way I could not capture the whole body of a bee with it. The Nikkor 105mm gives you something somewhere between 1.5mm (at maximum aperture) 10mm (at f/16) to 25+mm (at f/57 at 1:1 macro). This greater DOF will be extremely useful when shooting without (and also with) a tripod.
• At minimum aperture, the picture in the viewfinder through the 50mm system is completely dark so it is nearly impossible to focus on the subject. It helps in bright daylight but light is not always available. With the 105mm lens, the aperture stays wide open until you release the shutter. This way, you can easily focus on the subject.

Some issues I found:

• Not that I did not know, but things become quite jittery at macro level. Without a tripod it is hard to obtain a sharp picture unless there is a strong source of light.
• The Auto Focus system is a bit hard to use. I use this lens with my D300 and I was trying to shoot a ruler at a 45 degree angle to gauge the DOF. The AF has no problem with hunting for a focus point 40cm away but was having some problems at really close distance. I'd be better off using manual focus in this case.

Well, I took some shots of a house fly on a flower (weird uh?) yesterday. I was quite happy with the result. I used the built-in flash for these shots (image contrast adjusted and image sharpened a tad bit in Irfanview):

Macro with the 50mm and extension tube, part 3

A couple of macro shots of a tiny spider clinging to a wall:


DOF is really small at all f/stops!

Macro with the 50mm and extension tube, part 2

It rained hard about an hour earlier. I thought I'd look for some insects to shoot after the rain. There were a few but only one that stayed in one place long enough for me to shoot.

I have no idea what this fellow is, but it is colorful and tiny (maybe 1cm long). Was it going to drink from the water droplet? It took me 10 shots to get its head somewhat focused. (My 50mm with the extension tube is far from the perfect macro setup, but it helps that the D300 can meter properly.)



There was a weeny tiny little larva on this flower. After the rain, the larva was crawling in very wet cracks.


The world according to a water droplet hanging off the tip of a leaf.

Camera bag

Finally, I found the right camera bag for my super sized cameras. It is not too small, not too big, just enough to fit one of my two cameras with many of my camera accessories. It is actually not a camera bag. I stumbled upon this $10 wine and cheese cooler. The bag is padded all around but probably not enough for camera equipments so I added some extra padding with bubble envelopes and some cartons I obtained from Michaels' a couple of months ago. With some Krazy Glue and some more foam sheets, I've got a camera bag. The outside is black and has that nice design I can take the bag to parties and wedding receptions.

There is a small compartment at the top to store various little items. The bottom compartment is where I'd store the camera, lenses, and a flash.


Here is my oversize D300 (with a lens, a battery grip and hand strap) fitted in the bag:

Macro with the 50mm and extension tube

Alright, the excitement is fizzling. The 50mm lens with an extension tube can do macro but what I have noticed is that the depth of field is too small for anything but tiny bugs that are 2 mm long. Yes, 2 millimeter. That is not very long. That is the depth of field I have to work with at f/1.8 or f/11. Practically speaking, most insects I'd run into are significantly larger than 2 mm so I think I need a different solution for macro photography. I need a depth of field of at least 15mm.

I used to have a Vivitar 70-210mm lens. Maybe I should not have sold the lens.

First macro shot with D300

Here is the first shot I took with my D300 and the pancake 50mm MF AIS lens with an extension tube:


As one can see, about 19 mm of the ruler fits onto the sensor of the D300. Given that the D300 sensor is 23.6mm wide, the macro setup produces a 1.24:1 ratio. It is better than the 105mm macro lenses but obviously, I'd have to get pretty darn close to a subject with the 50mm, in fact, about 10 cm, a tiny bit too short for live insects.

Here is my D300 fitted with the 50mm attached to a simple extension tube. The extension tube has no electronic contacts.

Exposure metering of the D300

One thing I have started to really like on the D300 is its ability to meter with the old lenses. I have a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AIS manual focus lens, and I like using it with an extension tube for better than 1:1 macro photography.

When the 50mm lens is fitted on a D80, I have no clue what shutter speed to use to properly expose the sensor to the subject. I would shoot in manual mode, guessing what shutter speed to use. I would also have to turn the built-in flash to manual mode as well. The whole setup of shooting small insect this way is too cumbersome and I may not have the chance to shoot the bug a second or third time. The D300 however can meter the light required for perfect exposure. The built-in flash or pop-up flash just work. The D300 does all the work for you so all you have to worry about is concentrate on the subject, compose, and shoot. Nice, D300.

Missed my 18-200mm lens

I was in Vancouver for a week for a wedding last Saturday. Before the trip, I decided I was going to bring four lenses: 80-400mm, 50mm (manual focus, to play with), 17-50mm (for the wedding) and 18-200mm (attached to a D80 body, for the wedding, and for walking around with). As it turned out, my equipments could not all fit into my backpack and it was getting pretty heavy. I decided at last minute then to leave the 18-200mm with the D80 behind.

That was a mistake. I could leave the D80 behind but I really missed the 18-200mm focal length. I ended up having to switch between the 17-50mm and the 80-400mm lenses at the wedding reception (because sometimes I wanted to shoot close-up from afar), on the ferry to Vancouver island, at the top of Grouse mountain, in Victoria, etc. I also found that at the civic wedding ceremony that was held outdoors, that the 17-50mm was a bit short on the focal length side. I did not want to buzz around close to the couple like a bee during the ceremony. The 18-200mm lens would have been perfect then. Oh well. I should be better prepared next time.

Pocket Wizard, or not?

I have been contemplating at the Pocket Wizard. It sounds like a fantastic way of triggering one or more flash guns remotely. I even found a number of knock-offs that could work like the Pocket Wizard on eBay.

But then, what about the IR wireless trigger built in the D80 and D300? Would it not work just as well as the Pocket Wizard?

I need to do some research before shelling out some more bucks for this cool accessory.

Fill-in flash in bright daylight

I am confused. The other day I was at Centre Island taking pictures of friends participating in a dragonboat festival. It was a bright day with a fair amount of sun. I thought I could just connect my SB-800 speedlight to my new D300 and the camera will just know what to do with the flash. Well, all the background of all the shots I took with flash was over-exposed. The highest speed the camera could be cranked up to was 1/320 sec. I could not figure out it could not go higher. I had set the D300 in Aperture Priority mode.

I just re-read an article I wrote in 2008 about using the SB-800 with my D80:

http://photonfarmers.blogspot.com/2008/09/d80-and-sb-800-high-speed-flash-sync.html

In the last paragraph of the article, I said the D80 would not be able to shoot faster than 1/60 sec in Aperture Priority mode with the hotshoe flash on. It would sound like what happened on the island ... except that today, I thought I'd retest the SB-800 with both the D300 and D80 in Aperture Priority mode.

In both cases, with the SB-800 mounted, I pointed the camera at a bright scene that required a high shutter speed of exposure, like 1/2500 sec. I expected the camera shutter speed to be set automatically to 1/60 sec. To my surprise, the shutter speed adjusted appropriately to 1/2500 sec.

I thought, from my earlier 2008 experiment, that the maximum shutter sync speed in Aperture Priority mode is 1/60 sec (if a faster speed is desired, the D80 needed to be in Shutter Priority or Manual mode.) It does not appear to be the case. It worked fine in Aperture Priority. Could a newer firmware I might have upgraded the camera with, allowed for faster shutter sync speeds with the SB-800??

It does not explain what happened at the island though. Maybe I did not set the D300 to sync with the hotshoe flash in FP mode, as I do not recall seeing the "FP" mode on the SB-800 LCD panel. The "FP" mode needs to be turned on for the camera to sync with the SB-800 up to the camera's own maximum shutter speed. It could also be that I did *not* use the SB-800. I might have just used the built-in flash, which I think was limited to 1/320 sec.

In any case, I am now more ready for a wedding in a couple of weeks. I am sure my relatives will want their pictures taken everywhere, so I had better be ready for it.

Life expectancy of the D80

Back in June 2009 (http://photonfarmers.blogspot.com/2009/06/d80-actuations.html) I made a reference to this website that records the number of shutter actuations of various DSLRs before the shutter died. I thought I'd capture it once here so in case the site disappears I have a record of it. Make sure to visit the original site for the most up-to-date data.

Nikon D80

Direct link to this page: nikon_d80

Average number of actuations after which shutter is still alive: 65,511.5
Average number of actuations after which shutter died: 38,059.7

Clicks	Alive	Dead	Graph
397 … 653	5	3
654 … 1,074	1	1
1,075 … 1,768	5	2
1,769 … 2,909	21	2
2,910 … 4,786	43	1
4,787 … 7,875	74	3
7,876 … 12,957	116	10
12,958 … 21,318	137	7
21,319 … 35,074	126	2
35,075 … 57,708	85	2
57,709 … 94,947	38	3
94,948 … 156,217	9	3
156,218 … 257,024	6	1
257,025 … 422,882	2	1
422,883 … 695,768	1
695,769 … 1,144,748	2
1,144,749 … 1,883,453
1,883,454 … 3,098,845
3,098,846 … 5,098,528
5,098,529 … 8,388,607	3

Survival estimation (Kaplan-Meier):

Clicks	KM survival estimate	Graph
397 … 653	99.6%
654 … 1,074	99.4%
1,075 … 1,768	99.2%
1,769 … 2,909	98.9%
2,910 … 4,786	98.7%
4,787 … 7,875	98.3%
7,876 … 12,957	96.5%
12,958 … 21,318	94.9%
21,319 … 35,074	94.2%
35,075 … 57,708	93%
57,709 … 94,947	89%
94,948 … 156,217	79.5%
156,218 … 257,024	74.5%
257,025 … 422,882	66.2%
422,883 … 695,768	66.2%
695,769 … 1,144,748	66.2%
1,144,749 … 1,883,453	66.2%
1,883,454 … 3,098,845	66.2%
3,098,846 … 5,098,528	66.2%
5,098,529 … 8,388,607	66.2%

Case for AA batteries, part II

In February, I wrote about a small pouch/case to carry extra AA batteries. The reason I wanted one of those was really because I do not want to carry around a big backpack everywhere I go. The backpack is great for hiking and traveling but going into a gala, a wedding, a restaurant, or some party, it just does not fit the occasion.

After a wedding a couple of weekends ago, I happened to be at Walmart's looking for the small pouch in an earlier post. I could not find the exact pouch but did find something similar and similarly priced. I did not pick it up though. I decided what I needed was a something elegant enough for me to take into the special occasions, something I could store my camera and other accessories -- but wait, is that not what a Lowepro camera bag is made for? Yes. I had a Lowepro camera bag and gave it away because it was too small for my camera. I could get another bigger camera bag, but then thought a small travel bag would do. I would be able to store all my lenses and camera accessories including those AA batteries in it.

At Walmart's, I picked one of those travel handbags for $20. I need to pad it with some old sweater but it looks decent enough for me to take to a wedding in July.

Upgrading my camera

So, it's been three years since my purchase of the Nikon D80. The D80 is a nice camera and has endured a lot of abuse. After over 40K clicks, it is about time for an upgrade, not for its deficiencies but for its potential shutter failure. I am thinking of purchasing a D90.

Camera, lights, action!

It is hard to imagine you could produce professional quality studio images but with the right equipments and proper setup, it is not that hard. I was at the Henry's Photographic and Digital Imaging Show this afternoon, and this year, they introduced a new area called the "Shooting Centre". There were some pretty models and old bikes on display as well as a circus performer, and you get to try out some photo equipments like the strobes and light boxes. It was amazing. I took a few shots of a model on a vintage bike with a sidecar. I also took some shots of a bike alone. What a difference it makes when you have the right equipments. Below are some of the shots.

Shot with my single hotshoe flash:


Shot with the light equipments set up at the show (with three light sources):


Shot with show equipments (only the left strobe light was fired):


Model on a bike with the studio lights:

Case for AA batteries

I am looking for a small case to carry extra batteries (I have 17 rechargeable batteries in total) and other small camera accessories on my belt or in my pocket for easy access. I am thinking of buying this:

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Case-Logic-MEQB-1M-Eva-Hardshell-Small-Digital-Camera-Case-Blue/10297714

For $8, it's pretty cheap uh?

For a cheaper alternative, there is this DIY battery case:

http://www.diyphotogear.com/AA%20Battery%20Case.html

However, there is no belt clip or carabiner.

BTW, about those Duracell batteries I just bought ... I used them yesterday (after the Energizers failed to work) -- these Duracells worked great.

Rechargeable batteries for my SB800

I had to throw away a couple of rechargeable Energizer 2500mAh AA batteries that I used in my SB800 speedlight. Below are the two batteries I threw away. Notice the white blotches on the side wall of the batteries and white powder residues on the edge of the negative terminal. I don't know what caused the white blotches and the residue -- the negative terminal is made of one piece, like those pressed aluminum cans of Coke, so it's not like something leaked out. In any case, I threw these two batteries away and bought some new Duracell 2000mAh Pre-Charged rechargeables. These Duracell rechargeables behave like the Sanyo Eneloop rechargeables in that they will maintain 80% of their charge for up to a year, unlike normal rechargeable batteries.

Just to be clear ... you should not mix the different types of batteries when used in the speedlight. I will keep the Energizer set separate from the Duracell set.



For more information on the Duracell Pre-Charged Rechargeables: http://www.duracell.com/en-US/product/pre-charged-rechargeable-batteries.jspx

Ringing in a new year with a "blue moon"

As the party goers were pouring back onto the streets of Toronto after the stroke of midnight, I looked up into the overcasted sky. The moon appeared different. It was bright and turned the sky blue. It's rare to see a blue moon on New Year Eve.

I took a couple of shots at 17mm, f/2.8, ISO 800.

P.S. Besides this blue moon, this is also this "Blue Moon" by The Marcels, 1961. Enjoy!

Tamron's Vibration Compensation (VC)

My first post of 2010.

I mentioned earlier that the Tamron 17-50mm I just bought has Vibration Compensation (VC). I also mentioned that through the viewfinder, you can see the image jerking a little when the VC mechanism kicks in. Normally, this is fine, but when I used the delay timer on my camera and flash, the jerking caused major problems. I am not certain which component (delay timer or flash, or some specific settings) was causing problems, but see it for yourself. Below are crops of photos I took last night.

For these shots, the camera was placed on top of a backpack as I did not bring my tripod along. The flash was my SB-800 speedlight. The camera was set to slow+rear sync with the flash. I set the timer to 10 seconds, just long enough for me to run into the picture.

This crop of a photo, shot with VC, clearly shows the jerking:


On the spot, I initially attributed the blur to a possible camera shake as the camera was placed on a backpack with a big speedlight flash on the hotshoe so it could have been unstable. However, three consecutive shots gave the same result. It dawned on me then it could have been the Vibration Compensation -- yes, VC should not have been turned on in the first place, but with the Nikkor 18-200mm VR lens, I never had problems leaving VR on on a tripod.

Here was another shot without VC:


Know your gears. Know their quirks. Know their limitations.

Happy New Year! Happy Shooting!